A building company hopes to double its £600,000 turnover in its second full year of trading.

Core Structures specialises in using glued laminated timber - known as glulam - for public, private and residential buildings.

It is on course to beat its 2010 sales in the first of this year.

Hamish Morrison, managing director, said: “It will be disappointing for Core if we don’t double last year’s turnover, as we hope to pass the £600,000 mark by April.”

Morrison hopes more designers will start using glulam rather than steel.

He added: "We have a big job ahead of us, trying to convert designers away from steel to glulam and other timber products.

"We want to work with design teams to design in glulam at the conceptual stage, not to convert to it once the designs are complete.

"I suppose the UK traditional thinking is to use steel, but Glulam is more than just a viable alternative, with considerable advantages over steel in terms of its warm welcoming appearance and of course the fact that it has no carbon footprint."